Yes it's still September and I am daring to mention the C word!
Today I am starting a weekly column to get ready for Christmas
and I am inviting you to join me
and I am inviting you to join me
every Wednesday C.M.T. (China Me Time) and get involved.
Rather than adding to the pressure, the plan is to enjoy making and creating
some unique, fun and stylish things for Christmas.
Let's start with an image that I discovered on Flickr a few months ago
and began my creative christmas crusade.
Isn't this amazing?
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| Image by Jane Schouten Jane's inspirational mural is just perfect for people like me who have boxes of little treasures - too lovely to throw away but on their own too random to make much with. Now we have the answer! This afternoon I started to delve into my boxes and soon had a starter pack for my tree. I encourage you to make a little box this week and start collating things to go on your wall tree. How big should they be? Well that depends on the size of your final tree. I intend to have a wall tree about 5 foot high (1.70m), so objects between 1 and 4 inches (2 -10cm) will be fine. Don't worry about to fix them to the wall - I will come back to that nearer the time. Having some little pegs will be handy and nothing wants to be too heavy. Don't be limited to Christmassy things- think of it as a winter wonderland tree. I am not going to pretend I have all the answers yet but I never let that stop me in the past! Won't it be great to create something from all your long forgotten ephemera? Of course you may just need to go buy a few key extras but don't buy anything yet.  To encourage you to get started I am putting together a little starter pack of decorative eclectica for a wall tree which I would like to give away this week. There will be goodies in the bag from Thailand, China and other exciting places! Competition closed
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12 comments:
Oh, I've just begun planning for Christmas too :)
We celebrate Christmas all day the 24th with my husband, daughter, dog and my mom and my mother in law. We use to cook a lot, especially me and mom, and we have dinner together. Last year my sister and her kids were here too and my mom was Santa in the evening, delivering the gifts we had under the Christmas tree.
I love the Christmas preparations, much more than Christmas itself, actually.
If I find time this week I'll blog or twitter about this, either here -> http://lillalivetstort.wordpress.com or here -> http://familycreativa.blogspot.com
Oh, all right then. I'd been saving this little Christmas cone tutorial for closer to Christmas, but you're right, it's good to start early:
http://redredcompletelyred.blogspot.com/2010/09/russian-stacking-cones.html
One Christmas tradition I loved was putting the giant straw goats outside to welcome our Christmas visitors!
Hi Maria.
Lovely to hear about your traditions. We also celebrate on December 24th. I agree I think the preparations are the best fun of all.
I x
Hi Astrid
So glad you are starting early too. I love your cones.
I wish we still had the straw goats - we left them in Nottingham! Maybe ebay will have some!
I thought it was you! We did the Unravelling course together. And as you say it is not that many Ingrids out there! Pretty daring to mention the C - word!!
Kram Ingrid
I love this idea and what a great giveaway! I also like the idea of starting Christmas early - it will make December much less stressful, I'm sure.
Glad I am in good company, as I write the Christmas Puds, all 8 of them are on a steaming marathon. I can only do 3 at a time and they steam for 8 hours so takes military like planning or some very late nights!
I like to give them as gifts to my friends in the run up to Christmas.
As suggested by you I am working on a little something to leave my mark on their wrapping too.
Having Christmas with our daughter this year, a first. A bit ashamed to say that our Christmas does need a little zing put back in it, things have changed so much in the last years from a family point of view.
Glad we can share a small part of yours xx
I love your wall tree! If Christmas didn't involve stressful shopping, I would look forward to it more.
I like to decorate our real tree, especially with homemade ornaments from other countries and ones my daughter makes. We also bake tons of cookies to give as gifts to teachers, neighbors, babysitters, and other "helpers" in our lives.
(BYW)--and I love your blog name!
I just came over from Blogging your way, I love the idea for your colum and the funny thing is that this weekend I was sitting next to Jane ( the maker of the tree) , I really love that idea! Our christmas tradition...we just love to craft a lot and decorate the house together.
I love Jane's Mural idea and think it would be a lot of fun putting together.
In our family we have a tradition on giving donations to different charities instead of giving presents. We then go around the room sharing what each person has "received" and explain exactly what the charity is. We do give the children presents as well but they love the donations just as much!
What a fun idea for a post! I popped over from BYW, by the way.
As for my family traditions, I always make Christmas crackers. Love it!
I shoot Christmas stories often, for magazines, so it's never too early for Christmas!
Thanks so much for sharing your traditions.
If you post about any of them in the future do be sure to let me know so I can share it. Hint would love to know how to make crackers and great recipes.
I agree thinking of others and making charitable gifts are so important .
The starter bag for the wall tree is filling up with lots more fun things that I am finding! Thanks everyone for dropping by.
Hi, I found you as I was blog surfing and I'm glad I did. You have a great blog.
I guess it's time to start thinking about Christmas. We have lots of traditions, but one that the kids particularly enjoy is creating a gingerbread house.
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